Media devices receive programming from a media provider, and based upon a viewer's selection of a program of interest, stream the selected program of interest to a display which presents the selected program of interest to the viewer. An exemplary media device is a set top box (STB) that receives programming from a cable system media provider or a satellite system media provider. The media device may include its own display or be coupled to an external display, such as a television (TV). Thus, the viewer may select a movie of interest by inputting appropriate instructions to their STB. The movie is then presented on the viewer's TV.
Some media devices include a recording functionality. For example, a STB may include an internal digital video recorder (DVR) which, based upon the viewer's instructions, records selected programs of interest when they are available at the STB. The recording may occur while the viewer is concurrently viewing the program of interest on their TV, or may independently record the selected program of interest while the viewer is away or while the viewer is watching a different program. Other media devices may be coupled to other memory media and record selected programs of interest in accordance with the viewer's instructions. Examples of such other recordable media include digital video disks (DVDs), video cassette recorders (VCRs), and other suitable external memory media. In some instances, the media recording device is external to the media device.
Recording of a program of interest is typically based upon the scheduled start time and the scheduled end time of the program of interest. Thus, the media device monitors real time with the scheduled start time of the program of interest. When the scheduled start time arrives, the media device selects the program of interest from the available programming and begins recording. For example, the STB may first tune itself to receive the channel that is providing the program of interest. Then, the STB starts the recording of the program of interest. However, this process presumes that the program of interest is actually presented on that channel based on available program scheduling information. Recording ends when the scheduled end time arrives.
However, there are many situations where the media device will not record the entirety of the program of interest. For example, the program of interest may be a sporting event that does not finish at the scheduled end time due to one or more overtime periods. Here, the media device would end the recording of the sporting event at the scheduled end time, and therefore fail to record the overtime periods. Some media devices attempt to address such issues by extending the recording beyond the scheduled end time by some predefined amount of time. However, there is no guarantee that sufficient time extensions to the recording will be made so that all of the sporting event is recorded. Further, if the sporting event ends early, or ends at the scheduled end time, memory capacity of the recording media is unnecessarily utilized to store the extended time recording.
As another example, the program of interest may be interrupted by an unscheduled program, such as an emergency program or a high-priority program that was not previously scheduled. For example, a government official may be making a speech or the like that is important to the public. Thus, current programming may be interrupted on one or more channels so that the government official's speech is sent to the media device. As another example, a public emergency or news event may occur. The media provider may interrupt the current program to present a newscast or the like pertaining to the public emergency or news event.
In some situations, the interrupted program of interest, or a portion thereof, may be canceled. Accordingly, subsequently scheduled programming will not be impacted. That is, their scheduled start times and scheduled end times remain valid.
However, in some situations, presentation of the current program of interest will be delayed by the duration of the unscheduled program. That is, if presentation of the interrupted current program is delayed, its actual end time will occur after its scheduled end time. Since the media device cannot know that there is an interruption, and that the actual end time of the current program of interest will occur after the scheduled end time, the media device will fail to record the end of the program of interest since its record end time has been preset to the original scheduled end time of the program of interest.
Further, if the interruption delays the current programming, all subsequently scheduled programming on that channel will be impacted. That is, all subsequent programming (at least up through some selected reconciliation time) will have their respective scheduled start times and scheduled end times changes by the duration of the interruption. As an example, if the unscheduled program interruption occurs from 6:00 p.m. to 6:20 p.m., a program of interest on that channel originally scheduled to start at 8:00 p.m., and originally scheduled to end at 10:00 p.m., will actually start at 8:20 p.m. and end at 10:20 p.m. due to the unscheduled program interruption. Accordingly, if the viewer had previously set their media device to record the program of interest on that channel (from 8:00 p.m. through 10:00 p.m.), then the last 20 minutes of the program of interest will not have been recorded.
Accordingly, there is a need to coordinate program recordings with unexpected programming end time extensions, unexpected programming interruptions, and unexpected programming delays.